


gladly beyond

by mediest



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Anal Sex, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:14:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22164655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mediest/pseuds/mediest
Summary: Nowadays Felix slept on his left side. He didn’t know if this was his body’s natural inclination, or if it had learned to adjust yet again. He’d traded in tents and hillsides for the large brute of a man lying behind him, petting his hair.-A collection of Felix, Sylvain, and the living that comes after all the dying.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 51
Kudos: 784





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Various signs of aging.

It was dark when he rode into Fhirdiad. He’d aimed to arrive the next morning, after dawn, but it would’ve felt pathetic to slow down deliberately. 

After long absences, there was a specific way Dimitri clasped Felix’s shoulders and looked at him and said, “Welcome back.” This was a greeting easier received in the daylight, when Felix could see Dimitri directly and not be held captive by his own imagination.

Reunification was both boring and bloody business. The year after the war, occupation of Fort Merceus dragged on past the treaty arrangement. Count Bergliez briefly renounced homage. After that, unsettled territory claims flamed into skirmishes in Daphnel. Another year later, as Dedue led Duscur reconstruction operations, House Kleiman revolted over the loss of its feudal estate and mineral deposits. Now, insurgency rose outside the old Empire capital.

Felix went readily. Better this than politics. Better him than someone else less capable of harboring Dimitri’s trust. This was the new fulcrum they’d sculpted under their relationship. The compromise of “Welcome” compared to “Stay”.

The castle was not yet inactive. The household staff wouldn’t sleep until their king did. The chamberlain came to escort him, but Felix brushed him off. He knew where he was going.

At the open door to Dimitri’s study, Felix watched for a minute as Dimitri read documents at his desk—tax proposals, was Felix’s guess, based on Dimitri’s use of his counting board. He gave himself no longer than a minute, then spoke up: “Dimitri.”

Dimitri looked up. In the light of the fireplace, something cautious flickered across his face, before he seemed to regain a measure of certainty. “Felix,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting you until the morning.”

“I made good time on the road,” Felix said.

“You must be tired,” Dimitri said, rising from his desk.

“Speak for yourself.”

They walked the halls together. Felix gave some clipped answers to Dimitri’s requests for updates from the south, before saying, “It can wait until tomorrow. Don’t trouble yourself this late at night.”

Dimitri raised an eyebrow. “Is there troubling news?”

“No,” Felix said impatiently, “I’m telling you to go to bed.”

“Ah,” Dimitri said.

There were fine lines across Dimitri’s forehead that deepened whenever he smiled, which he did more often these days. Occasionally Felix found himself staring at Dimitri from across the council room. He had to stop doing that. Even Dimitri had noticed. The most recent time he’d approached Felix afterwards and said, “Felix, if I’ve done something to upset you—”

“You haven’t,” Felix’d cut in, annoyed with himself. He’d left it at that. There was no reason to make Dimitri feel even more self-conscious. The root issue was just that Felix knew Dimitri’s face too well. It’d been trained into his memory. Each time Felix got caught staring it was only because he was imagining one of those little books they’d both been fond of as children, made up of a series of pictures that shift gradually from one page to the next. He was turning the pages, watching Dimitri’s face change and evolve: Dimitri’s baby fat, into Dimitri’s crumbly smile, into Dimitri’s vacant sneer, into Dimitri, heavily crowned. He’d sit there in that stuffy council room imagining this and a feeling would well up inside of him. A sensation in his throat; a flash of vigilance scratching at the door. 

Felix couldn’t understand it. Why his body suddenly believed it was in jeopardy. What his body believed it had lost and would lose again. 

They reached Felix’s bed chambers. Felix said, “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Dimitri responded, lingering. His blue eye was greyed out in the darkness, but the moon provided some additional light. Felix looked at him. Just really fucking looked at him. He was a man. One who solace seemed constantly to creep around like a vine, without ever truly touching him. He was only a man. 

Felix waited. _Well?_

Dimitri clasped Felix’s shoulders and looked back at him. He said the words. In his own mind, Felix said them back. 

-

Five days later, Sylvain returned from a diplomatic mission to Sreng. He had a winter beard and some winter weight. 

“Felix,” he greeted, dismounting his horse as he cleared the gate. He must’ve acclimated to the weather further up north, because he was dressed like a lunatic. No furs, not even a light cloak. 

“Sylvain,” Felix said. He tried to keep a neutral expression. “You look well.”

Sylvain subtly flexed his arms.

Dimitri invited all three of them to dinner, forgoing the great hall in favor of the more private south solar. “Goddess,” Ingrid said immediately when she saw Sylvain, “your face,” which made Sylvain break into a huge grin and insist that she come over and feel it.

The two of them hadn’t seen each other in a while. Ingrid’s guard was down. The moment she touched the small animal growing on his face, Sylvain attacked: reeling her closer and rubbing his cheek all over hers. Ingrid yelped and fought him off, but the damage was done. For the rest of the evening the entire left side of her face was pink with beard burn. 

This room had fit more people in its past. The stained glass panels of birds in the windows were unchanged. The ornate overmantle above the fireplace. Dimitri and Sylvain sat in the large leather chairs their fathers used to sit in, and continued an ongoing game of chess.

Ingrid browsed the towering bookshelves for a specific collection. Her gait was off. Her knee injury flared up whenever the air grew humid enough. It was less of a problem in Galatea, where there was so little moisture that the soil was frozen and barren. But for knighthood she’d left behind her home, status, and any pressures of marriage, and here in the capital the winds along the eastern coast carried heavier precipitation that made her grit her teeth in the mornings.

“How typical,” she’d said to Felix as they’d drilled together, “to realize ninety percent of a dream.” She’d wiped the sweat from her brow and added, “At least it hasn’t affected my flying.”

Felix placed himself on the floor, fitting his back against one of the chessboard table’s cabriole legs, staring into the crackling fire. He’d wanted to throw something, his first time being back here alone after they’d retaken the castle. Actually he _had_ thrown something: a white painted jug that’d shattered against the floor. It’d gouged a puncture wound into the wood. Afterwards Felix’d stood surrounded by broken ceramic, breathing harshly, feeling stupid. 

The evidence was still there. The rug wasn’t large enough to hide the damage. Felix searched for it each time he came. The new thing surviving amidst all the old. 

He felt someone looking at him. He glanced up and it was Sylvain. 

“If you like the rug so much, Felix, I’m sure His Majesty would commission one for you,” Sylvain said. 

Dimitri nodded, studying the chessboard. It was his move. His rook was in danger.

Felix’s gaze dragged across Sylvain’s face. “Is that what you did?”

A surprised laugh escaped Dimitri’s mouth. Ingrid snorted. Sylvain rubbed his jaw plaintively.

“Do all of you hate it?” he asked. “You can be honest.”

A wave of ambivalent pussyfooting: “of course not,” from Dimitri, and “well,” from Ingrid.

Felix reached up, and Sylvain leaned down right on cue. “I don’t hate it,” he said, touching Sylvain’s beard. It felt healthy and soft.

He’d enjoyed Sylvain’s edges too. It’d felt good to scrape himself against them during wartime. Each time Felix’d gone to his knees, Sylvain would throw an arm across his face and groan out something like, “You’re killing me, sweetheart.”

The final day in Enbarr, as the world went quiet, he’d found Sylvain outside the throne room, walking through the rubble, identifying injured soldiers from dead ones. He watched from a few yards away as Sylvain stopped next to a destroyed ballista, rubbed his gauntlet down his face, and then abruptly lowered himself onto the steps. 

Felix was moving before he realized it. “What’s wrong,” he said. His voice was low and raw. “What do you need. Tell me.”

“I’m fine. Ah, fuck,” Sylvain said. He sounded incredulous. He waved a hand, the other one still covering his face. “Sorry. Just give me a minute.”

Felix stood there, looking down at Sylvain’s damaged body, folded in under an invisible force overpowering him. Then, with no insight into what secondary force was possessing himself, Felix lunged his arm out to grab the back of Sylvain’s skull and dig his fingers into Sylvain’s filthy hair, pulling him forward.

Sylvain buried his face against Felix’s stomach. His arms wrapped around the back of Felix’s thighs. He breathed with his whole body, chest heaving, shoulders rising and falling. Each hot, ragged puff of air pierced through layers of bloody clothing. Sylvain grabbed and released fistfuls of Felix’s cloak in succession. The way his shoulder armor cut against Felix’s abdomen wasn’t painless. Still, Felix bent forward, covering Sylvain, and matched his breath until the dust settled. They’d gotten their fill of each other’s edges. There was nothing more to lose by learning something new. 

-

There was a trick to falling asleep, no matter the climate conditions, the fly-infested outposts, the smell of blood and shit and metal and horses. All children of Faerghus learned it. First you gradually relax the muscles in your face: your tongue, your jaw, your eyes. Next, drop your shoulders, then your arms, then breathe out while relaxing your chest, your thighs, the rest of your legs. After your body has fallen away, clear your thoughts of all but a single image. Felix knew what Ingrid always imagined: lying in a field of tall grass with nothing but a clear blue sky above. He knew Sylvain’s image: total darkness beneath the dirt, all five of his senses blissfully dulled. He knew about Dimitri’s pool of light, and that Dimitri’d stopped using it once he was older. 

Felix knew how to sleep in any way necessary. As rigid as stone, by himself in his officer’s tent. Among twenty other soldiers in muddy bedrolls. Sitting in ravines or against a hillside wedged between Ingrid and Sylvain for warmth, each of them taking turns in the middle.

Nowadays Felix slept on his left side. He didn’t know if this was his body’s natural inclination, or if it had learned to adjust yet again. He’d traded in tents and hillsides for the large brute of a man lying behind him, petting his hair.

Sylvain kept stroking his fingers from the roots all the way to the ends. Some time ago he’d won permission to play with Felix’s hair if he woke up first. His cock was hard against the back of Felix’s thigh, but there was no sense of urgency. 

Then Sylvain stopped mid-stroke. He said, “Huh,” softly.

There was a short tug against Felix’s scalp that didn’t register as anything close to pain. It was probably a knot. Sylvain’s finger-combing could be overenthusiastic. 

“Look,” Sylvain said.

Felix turned. Sylvain was propped up on an elbow, eyes golden, skin tanned in the dim light. There was a strand of gray hair in his palm. 

Something inside of Felix reacted. Something horrifically open, turning over and showing its belly. Felix hadn’t expected this from himself.

“Hey,” Sylvain said, reading his face. “It’s no big deal. It’s natural. No matter what you’re still devastating to look at.”

Felix worked up enough halfhearted derision to say, “Don’t flatter me. I’m already in your bed.”

Sylvain smiled. “Lucky me.”

He blew on the hair. It floated out of his hand and disappeared into the room, lost among the blankets and dust motes. Then his arm returned to Felix’s waist. Felix rolled back onto his side. It wasn’t a matter of vanity. When he pictured what he’d look like, what was lurking in his own future, he simply couldn’t grasp it. He had no frame of reference. He was nowhere near his father’s final age, yet he was graying earlier. It didn’t seem fair. The year after Glenn’s death, Felix’d dreamt of him, caustic and immortal, transforming into ash. He didn’t remember his own mother’s face. None of it was fair. People outlived each other. Nobody got what they deserved.

Sylvain was no longer enamored by Felix’s hair. He’d moved on to Felix’s neck, kissing it, his beard scratching Felix’s skin. “What’s on your mind?”

“It’s nothing,” Felix said.

Sylvain bit gently at Felix’s shoulder. “It’s so sexy when you lie to me. Do it again.”

Felix thought about giving Sylvain a hard slap to the thigh, but Sylvain’d probably like that. Instead he said, “You told me something once at Enbarr.”

Sylvain stilled. “That’s what you’re thinking about?”

Felix shrugged. He put a hand against his own stomach. He felt the echo of Sylvain’s voice, the confession he’d breathed into Felix’s body: _Ah, fuck. I’d really counted on dying._

“It was a long time ago,” Sylvain said. “A lot’s changed.”

“I know,” Felix said. They were in that strange phase of time when everything felt both long ago and entirely clear.

Sylvain resumed petting Felix’s hair. It took some effort, but Felix relaxed back against him. 

“Do you want to sleep some more?” Sylvain asked. “It’s still early.”

Felix grunted an affirmation. He reached back to squeeze Sylvain’s cock through his smallclothes. “I’ll take care of this later.”

Sylvain gave a husky laugh. “No rush.”

Felix closed his eyes. In his own image, he was always standing, rather than lying down. He was standing in the wilderness, deep snow up to his ankles, and there were both mountains and the sea in the distance, a combination of places he’d been before. It was cold, and familiar, and silent all around. The sun reflected blindingly off the white surface of the ground, so that it was impossible to tell where the horizon was, and how long it would take to reach it, how far there was left to travel.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hour of burial for the old Margrave Gautier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> converting this into a dumping grounds for general "pointless sylvix and the inherent sexiness of living to see your 30s". cribbed from some eastern orthodox funeral texts and james joyce letters for this one.

It was tradition to leave the body out for three days before burial. Commoners often laid their loved ones across a bed or table, facing the east. Upon the altar, they placed twigs from a consecrated tree, icons of their favorite Saint, a hunting knife to protect the dead on their journey, or candles to light the way. If you were of noble birth, you took your repose in the chapel of your manor. The oil lamps would be kept burning for you all three days and nights. 

Felix arrived on the third day. Inside Gautier manor, the mirrors were draped in black velvet and the clocks had each been stopped. Sylvain was in his father’s office, sorting through his personal belongings. 

He smiled when he saw Felix.

“You look so beautiful.” Sylvain himself looked like he hadn’t washed or slept. “How can you show up to my father’s funeral looking this beautiful?”

Felix kissed Sylvain’s forehead instead of responding. Then he sat shoulder-to-shoulder next to Sylvain on the bare oak floor. 

Sylvain divided a stack of correspondence and gave Felix half. Three piles were arranged across the floor: the first (small) was for record-keeping, the second (smaller) was for sentiment, and the third large, shapeless puddle of papers was for burning. 

“He died in his bed,” Sylvain said. “Did I tell you that?”

“Your letter didn’t mention,” Felix said. He unfolded an official missive, scanned it, and placed it with the others to be burned. 

“He laid down to rest after his bath. Sabine found him when she came back with his tea.”

Felix had come to know the old Margrave well enough. It was not the kind of death he would’ve chosen for himself. 

They kept sorting through letters together. Dimitri would arrive tomorrow with Ingrid for the hour of burial. Ingrid would stay for a few days, but Dimitri had plans to visit Duscur now that the weather was shifting. 

It was spring. The ground was thawing outside, snow melting into deep pools of water clear enough to reflect the sky and trees. Each year the north saw floods. Sunshine was treacherous in its own way, Felix thought. There was an old proverb that Rodrigue used to favor: a man destined to hang can never be drowned. If he escaped one disaster, he was merely fated for a different kind. If not war, then illness and time. 

“Uh oh,” Sylvain spoke up.

He’d discovered a thick bundle of envelopes, bound together with twine. The topmost was addressed to the late Margravine, in his father’s penmanship. 

Felix said, “Don’t open those,” and then looked to the ceiling for deliverance when Sylvain freed a letter from the bundle anyway.

“My dearest love,” Sylvain read aloud, “my beautiful wildflower, my faithful darling. Is it warm where you are? My body is crazy with wanting to see you once again. I feel sick with desire.” 

Disbelieving glee crept into Sylvain’s voice. “I did as you told me, you dirty girl, and pulled myself off twice when I read your letter. Yet nothing I do can hope to compare to your golden eyes, your delicious pink c—”

“Finish that sentence and I’ll _gut_ you,” Felix interrupted, flushed red to his ears. 

Sylvain grinned. “C’mon, it’s funny.”

Felix dragged a hand down his hot face. He was grinning, too, helplessly behind his fingers. 

Sylvain placed the bundle of love letters into the pile of sentiment. “I guess that shit runs in the family,” he said.

“No,” Felix said. 

Sylvain met Felix’s eyes. The reflexive playfulness fell off his face. He seemed to realize what Felix was going to say, and was both afraid and desperate to hear it. Either way, Felix stroked his fingertips against Sylvain’s scruffy jaw. He made sure Sylvain was looking at him and nothing else, and felt as Sylvain exhaled slowly. 

“None of you is owed to them,” Felix said, low and decisive. 

-

They’d buried the Margravine Gautier two years prior. That time, Sylvain’d sat in the chapel and outlasted his father. Felix finally went inside to drag Sylvain out towards food and sleep. He hadn’t expected to see Sylvain crying—silently, confused, ashamed. He’d thought that relationship had long deteriorated. 

It had, Sylvain said. He’d always understood his father in some measure, but he’d never really understood her. She’d released him from her own body onto this earth, hungry and screaming and new, crying for protection, for unconditional love. She was his mother and she’d left him to the vultures and fed him to the fucking wolves. Her death was the death of any belief in reconciling, and the death of his own guilt for not having wanted reconciliation anyway. He felt safer now that she was gone. He felt relieved, and that was the sort of hard, instinctive cruelty that he hated in himself. She was his mother. How could he feel this way about his own mother?

Felix stayed and told him, “Feel whatever way you want.” Whatever ugly, ferocious, metallic emotion you could wrangle out of grief, however you could find a way to interpret the senselessness that still left you standing—that was it. Felix had learned this by now. There was no good or right way to do it. There was only the way you did it. 

-

The sky was overcast on the hour of burial, but Gautiers were laid to rest deep underground anyway. The bishop was one who’d remained in the old Margrave’s employ for the length of Felix’s memory. She’d shrunk a few inches in height since Felix’s youth. Felix knew her as a cold and severe woman. Homegrown in the wintry domain of House Gautier. 

“We pray today for the repose of the soul departed from this life,” she said, “and for the forgiveness of his every transgression, willful and unwilling.”

Felix stood at Sylvain’s left, Dimitri at Sylvain’s right. Ingrid stood a pace behind as the king’s retinue. They each wore customary black. It was a dark, granite crypt, lit by yellow torches that pulled their shadows up onto the vaulted ceilings. Rodrigue was in the family burial grounds beside Felix’s mother. Glenn was unknowable. Both felt preferable to this.

“If he has incurred the curse of father or mother; if he has committed bitter and grievous sin; if he through thoughtlessness has failed to obtain forgiveness; do you forgive him through me, your unworthy servant?”

Sylvain shuddered, but stayed quiet. His left arm twitched. Felix held his gaze forward. The back of his hand touched the back of Sylvain’s. 

The bishop said: “I looked on the tombs, and I saw the bones therein were naked of flesh, and I asked, Which indeed is he that is king? Which is soldier? Which is the rich and which the poor? Which the righteous and which the delinquent? In the graves there sleeps the beauty of your image now given up to decay, ignoble and bare of all graces. To death we are all united in wedlock. Back to earth and ash from where he was first taken, you did sentence him to return again, O Goddess, and we pray you give him rest.

“Let his body dissolve into its elements, and take mercy and compassion on his soul.”

Sylvain approached the casket first. He was like Felix now: no longer anyone’s brother or anyone’s son. This was knowledge that typically reached a person in fragments. On the first day, Felix had stood in the bloody fog of Gronder Field and when the news came his only feeling was clarity. On the second day, he’d met the eyes of anyone who looked at him. He’d hunted for confrontation. He’d put himself in Dimitri’s path, then hated Dimitri for resisting the bait. On the third day, he’d taken a horse and rode out alone to the summit of a hill where the ruins of an old watchtower stood dry and crumbling. He’d sat amidst the weedy grass, yellow and spiny and thick, growing around all the broken stone. He’d laid his forehead against his knees and pressed his gloved fist against his mouth and waited out his own weakness. 

You left the body out for three days of emotional slaughter, and at the end of those three days there was still a body, and it was still your father. 

Sylvain bent and kissed his father’s brow. He said something that nobody else could hear. 

Felix looked upon the old Margrave’s face for himself too. Then he moved on. 

The bishop sprinkled soil atop the body, then pulled up the white burial shroud, and that was the end of it. 

-

“Here’s what I’d want,” Sylvain was saying. “You all get wildly drunk and then go around the room telling your favorite stories about me. There’s music and games and dancing until sunrise. If you tire out _before_ sunrise, you get thrown into the baths as punishment. Last man or woman standing gets my entire fortune.”

“At my funeral, I want you to take a forty-day vow of silence,” Ingrid said, slightly drunk already.

They were gathered together in the great hall. Sylvain didn’t like the dais, and had broken tradition to seat them at the end of the long side table instead. Another retired knight approached to pay her respects. Sylvain stood up to receive it.

Felix turned to Dimitri. “Give Dedue and Mercedes my regards when you see them.”

“I will,” Dimitri agreed. “They’ve arranged to visit the capital this summer, to celebrate Mercedes’ birthday alongside Annette’s.”

This was not information; it was an invitation. 

“Fine,” Felix said.

“Sylvain’s version of funeral rites sounds quite lovely,” Dimitri said.

“You don’t like to dance,” Felix pointed out. 

“No,” Dimitri acknowledged, “but it could be nice just to listen and watch.”

“You’d lose out on Sylvain’s inheritance,” Ingrid said, which made Dimitri chuckle.

“They dance in Brigid,” she added, sounding contemplative. “Dorothea and I attended the vigil for Petra’s grandfather. There was a lot of food, and nine days of dancing.”

Sylvain joined back in: “Alright, forget the dancing. None of you enjoy dancing. We’ll just do the drinking and storytelling parts.” 

Dimitri said, “I’d like that.”

“Why are we talking about this,” Felix said, with more force than he’d intended. 

It never ended. He could believe he was fine, and then all of a sudden something with snarled roots reemerged inside his chest. Felix had always known that one way or another, Dimitri would go first. All the years he’d torn across the country and spat venom between his teeth trying to drag Dimitri away from the noose, pull Dimitri out of the sea. How could he not know? That in the end he’d bury each family he belonged to. 

“Felix,” said Dimitri, and Felix turned his face away and tightened his jaw and said, “What?”

When he looked back, Dimitri’s expression was impossible to endure. “It’s nothing. I apologize.”

Felix stood from his seat. He brushed his thumb against the corner of his eye swiftly. “I’ll see you tomorrow before you leave.”

“Rest well,” Dimitri said.

“Are you going to bed, Felix?” Ingrid asked.

“I’m just getting some air.”

“Hey,” Sylvain said, catching Felix by the wrist. He looked tired, but handsome, and there was nothing looming over him anymore except the flickering candlelight of the chandeliers.

“Where are you going?” he asked, his voice warm and private. “I’ll find you later.”

The leash around Felix’s throat slackened. He released a slow breath. “Come with me.”

Sylvain rubbed his thumb back and forth across the ridge of Felix’s knuckles. “I should stay. It’s not over yet.”

But the mourners were dispersing. The food had grown cold on the tables. Felix thought of any of them having to ever listen to another liturgy and it made him want to kill someone, most likely the bishop delivering it, so maybe Sylvain was right. Why not dance for a while.

“It’s only us now,” Felix said. “What do you want to do?”

After a moment of thought, Sylvain smiled.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang catches hypothermia.

The knocking continued for fifteen seconds before a clear, impatient voice added: “It’s Ingrid.”

Felix dragged his mouth away from Sylvain’s, glancing towards the door to his bed chambers. Sylvain took the opportunity to stroke the back of his palm against Felix’s profile. He had that sleepy, reverent expression on his face. Felix hesitated, tempted. The thick outline of Sylvain’s cock was heavy and hot against Felix’s hip.

“You’re not gonna finish what you started?” Sylvain murmured.

“Later,” Felix said reluctantly, rising from the bed.

“You always say that.” 

Sylvain stretched out languidly. He winked when he saw Felix noticing. It was true that Sylvain was looking good these days. Eating well. Finding purpose in his work. They both slept through the night more often than not. Strange, Felix thought, how life could just find you. 

He opened the door without bothering to fix the state of his clothing or hair. 

“What is it,” Felix said, then also: “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Ingrid said, unimpressed.

“Morning,” Sylvain called out. 

“Did something happen?” Felix asked. Ingrid’s expression wasn’t reassuring.

Her eyes went towards Sylvain. “It snowed overnight.”

Shit. Felix grimaced. “How deep is it?”

“Deep enough.”

“Does Dimitri know?”

Ingrid nodded grimly. In this, if nothing else, she and Felix were allied. The first snow of the season had special meaning if the four of them were lucky enough to be gathered in the same place. Behind Felix, Sylvain was getting out of bed too, pushing open the thick brocade curtains to look outside. His husky voice, growing slyer by the minute: “Oh, hello.”

-

“We’re getting too old for this,” Ingrid commented, pulling her hair back into a short stubby ponytail nonetheless. “You certainly are, Sylvain.”

“Weren’t you the one always telling me not to place limits on myself?” Sylvain teased. “How’re you doing, Felix? Sweaty yet?” 

Felix had started sweating within a minute of stepping inside the bathhouse. Five more minutes later, his face was burning hot and his hair stuck to all sides of his neck and he felt like he’d just gone for a swim in a boiling river. 

“Let’s just get this over with,” Felix said, cranky from the heat. He folded his arms across his slick bare chest.

“Yes,” said Dimitri, flushed a regal pink all over, “I don’t enjoy the thought of any of us being seen like this.”

They’d each stripped down to their undergarments. It was a couple hours past sunset. This meant fewer castle occupants likely to witness the king and some of his dearest friends willfully submit themselves to hypothermia. This also meant the temperature outside had fallen below freezing. 

Sylvain bared his teeth in a grin. “Alright. Our reigning champion Ingrid is this year’s timekeeper. Everybody hits the ground at the same time. Anyone who’s a single count behind is disqualified. No more cheating.”

“That was _you_ ,” Ingrid said. 

Sylvain blazed onward. “No lying still, no fetal position. We’re making snow angels, not snow craters. The record to beat is still His Majesty at 38 seconds, in the year 1189.”

“That was a good year,” Dimitri mused, “with the Sreng treaty talks. And crop yield was particularly high.”

“Someone tried to assassinate you,” Felix said. 

“Well, the rest of the year went smoothly.”

Ingrid rolled her shoulders back and swung her arms across her chest. To her, this game was both terribly childish and deadly serious. “Everyone ready?”

“After you,” said Sylvain graciously, so Ingrid led the charge, and they all went running barefoot and half-naked like maniacs out of the bathhouse, into the snowy darkness of the castle grounds.

The sensation of frigid air enveloping Felix’s sticky, overheated skin was always a shock. For a brief moment, it felt like relief; then, swiftly, like his entire body was seizing up and shutting down.

Ingrid led them to a satisfactory expanse of untouched snow and yelled: “Ready! Set!”

They landed flat on their backs. The cold reached a whole new level. It knocked the air out of Felix’s lungs. The grunt Dimitri made when he hit the snow was loud and deep and startled. Like a bear, if you slapped it across the face with a fish.

Ingrid began to count. Every number was punctuated by some inspired foul language.

“Oh fuck,” Sylvain moaned. “It’s so cold my cock’s gonna fall off. Felix, sweetheart, we’re never going to have kids.”

There were a million icepicks stabbing through Felix’s body. He was waving his arms and legs through the snow on sheer muscle memory. He managed to gasp back, “F-fuck off. Fuck your bloodline. Fuck!”

“Eleven!” Ingrid was shouting like a master-at-arms with frostbite. “Twelve! Fucking tits! Thirteen!”

“Count faster!” Felix gritted out.

“Felix,” Dimitri sounded shivery, but his tone shifted the way it did when he was about to make a joke, “I thought you’d trained yourself not to experience anything as common as ‘temperature’.”

Sylvain laughed. Felix grabbed a fistful of snow and chucked it to his left, trusting that it’d hit one of them, he didn’t care which one.

“Hey!”

Sylvain, then. But he kept laughing. Dimitri was laughing too, a low quaky rumble. Ingrid jumped from twenty-three to “fuck it, thirty, forty, fuck!” Felix watched the steam of his breath rise and fade against the velvety blue and purple night sky. There were stars, a lot of them, dense and gleaming. He could hear his blood pounding and his teeth chattering and, above that, all the complaining and shouting and laughing. 

-

Dimitri’s sneeze echoed through the room.

Felix’s sneeze followed on its heels, diminutive in comparison. 

Ingrid went around refilling cups of tea and said, “Maybe we should retire this tradition once and for all.”

“You’re just sore that I stole the championship title away from you,” Sylvain said. 

“I’ll be more sore if we end up committing unintentional regicide,” Ingrid retorted. 

“I honestly feel fine,” Dimitri said, and sneezed again. 

The warmth of the fireplace thawed out Felix’s muscles and gave feeling back to his hands. He sat in one of the plush parlor chairs and drank his tea and stayed out of it. The fact of it was that this tradition would never be retired. How long had they each carried their past on their shoulders like pails of water up a mountain? It was heavy, and little of it was happy. But here was one thing that felt unbloodied and light. 

Sylvain got up from his own chair, dragging a blanket behind himself. He sat down at Felix’s feet, and tipped his head back. “Hi.”

Felix pushed his fingers through Sylvain’s snow-damp hair. “We _are_ getting too old for this.”

“Thank you, Felix,” Ingrid pitched in from the opposite end of the fireplace, interrupting her own conversation with Dimitri. She was always good at hearing when other people agreed with her. 

“That’s probably true,” Sylvain said.

He leaned back against Felix’s legs and reached an arm up to take Felix’s hand. The fire bathed their faces in warm shadow and color. Sylvain played with Felix’s hand for a moment, then just held it. Felix let it rest against Sylvain’s shoulder.

Sylvain said, deceptively casual: “Think we’re getting old enough for other things?”

This was not Sylvain’s first time asking. There’d been another time, right after the war. Felix had said no, I’m not ready. Then Sylvain had pleaded. Then Felix had said _you’re_ not ready either. Then they’d fought, savagely. Sylvain didn’t know how to be with someone he wasn’t willing to lose. He liked the idea of commitment, the idea of trust. Did he know you had to earn it? Okay, well what about Felix? Felix’d survived a war and then kept going back for seconds. The Fraldarius estate was a useless standing mausoleum. He didn’t know how to be home for any longer than a month at a time. He didn’t know how to dole out affection in any size larger than a crumb. Sylvain wasn’t even asking Felix to meet him halfway, he was standing an inch away from Felix’s face, he was begging for just an _inch_ , and Felix couldn’t give that much? Any verbal weapon they could pick up and throw, they’d picked it up and thrown it. Then Sylvain had crouched down and dragged both hands down his face and said yeah, okay. We’re not ready.

Felix stared at the back of Sylvain’s head and dug back up every ugly word, every terrible emotion, and when he washed them off he found that they’d been made dull and smooth, and sprouted down there in the ground alongside them was—

Sylvain misread Felix’s silence. He twisted around with a rueful expression. “Or is this another ‘later’?”

Felix found his voice. “No,” he said, and swallowed. “I mean—yes. Fine.”

Sylvain sat up straight. Something nervous crossed his face. “You’re serious?”

“Have I ever told a joke?” Felix said hoarsely.

“That was a pretty good one, just now.”

“Shut up and listen.”

It was like looking straight into the sun. Sylvain’s gradual smile could power a small village. 

“I’ve followed you for this long,” Felix said. “I would’ve done it forever anyway.”

Sylvain kissed Felix’s ring finger, and said, “I’m gonna make you so fucking happy,” and it made Felix huff out a wry laugh, because that was like winter pledging inevitable snowfall.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A coda.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> twitter prompt: felix appreciating winter beard/winter weight sylvain. chronologically this'd happen during part 1, but it doesn't matter bc it's just porn

“Felix,” Sylvain said, a low puff of air, “ease up, beautiful, or you’re gonna choke me out.”

“You’d like that,” Felix said shakily, unlocking his legs from around Sylvain’s neck. Fuck, he was sweaty.

“Wouldn’t hate it.”

Sylvain turned his face, grinning, so he could drag his tongue against the pink, tender skin of Felix’s inner thigh. Felix jerked involuntarily, said, “Fuck,” and his thighs squeezed around Sylvain’s ears again.

He’d been down there for what felt like hours, worshiping Felix’s cock and balls in his mouth, eating Felix out, rubbing over four weeks of beard growth against Felix’s asscheeks. A month apart from each other and Sylvain acted like a man who’d just crossed a desert. Felix’s body was the first drink of water he’d had in years. 

Felix knew he was going to end up with beard burn on the base of dick, all up and down his thighs. Tomorrow the fabric of his trousers was going to hurt rubbing against his skin anytime he moved and all he’d be able to imagine was Sylvain’s ridiculous hot mouth, Sylvain looking up at him through his lashes with an unmasked affection that tore Felix’s chest apart.

Sylvain could give head until the sky fell. Felix lost patience first. He didn’t want to come without Sylvain inside him. 

“Enough,” he said, tugging on Sylvain’s soft red hair. “Fuck me already.”

“Yeah?” Sylvain pressed a kiss to the crease of Felix’s groin. “You taste so good. I missed you so much.”

“Yeah,” Felix breathed, “come on, fuck me.”

He quaked when Sylvain finally pushed in. It was good, it was always good. Today it was _really_ good. There was some kind of alchemy in the angle and the pressure today. Sylvain nuzzled Felix’s throat, sucked on it, scraped his beard against the sensitive skin. Felix had to reach up to grab the headboard, gasping as he fucked himself back down on that gorgeous thick cock. The friction against his sore ass and thighs was delicious agony. It was right on the edge of pain and pleasure, right where Felix needed it. 

“Fuck,” Felix panted as Sylvain built up a steady rhythm, “what the fuck are you doing to me.”

He couldn’t control his own vocalizations. He moaned and growled and Sylvain called him “lovely” as he folded Felix in half and slammed into him. 

Sylvain had gained some weight recently, and Felix hadn’t gotten used to it yet. He hadn’t developed any immunity. The new thickness of Sylvain’s arms and thighs, the softness of his chest, the way Sylvain could surround Felix on all sides with his warmth and scent—it made Felix’s dick _leak_. 

He wrapped his legs tighter around Sylvain, clamped down harder around Sylvain’s cock. Sylvain groaned above him, breathing hard, sweat in his hair. He was unraveling fast too, Felix could see it, Sylvain’s flushed face and slack mouth. He yanked Sylvain down for a kiss. It was sloppy and hot and it scratched up Felix’s face. The headboard knocked rhythmically against the wall. Felix’s back slid helplessly up the bed. He didn’t know where it was coming from, this wildness he felt, the desire to climb inside Sylvain and live there, in that pool of safety and light. A month apart from each other and Felix was acting like he’d never seen the sun before. 

“Are you gonna come?” Sylvain murmured into the kiss, his mouth sliding off onto Felix’s cheek. “Want me to touch you? Fuck, I’m so close.”

“Me too,” Felix said, ravaged. He could come just like this, without Sylvain doing anything more than covering him with his body and fucking him and kissing him. 

But Sylvain always raised the ante. He wrapped a large hand around Felix’s cock and Felix went hurtling towards the cliff. He arched up into that wave of pleasure, the grip of Sylvain’s hand, the drag of Sylvain’s cock in and out of his ass. He cried out and came in wet pulses all over his stomach and Sylvain’s. 

“Come on,” Felix said once he recovered, he practically snarled it, “come on, let me feel you.”

Sylvain spasmed and locked up and came with a shudder, emptying his balls deep inside Felix’s body. 

Felix drifted for a while after that. At some point Sylvain rose to clean them both up. When the bed dipped again, Felix opened his eyes to see Sylvain watching him, curled up next to Felix like an opposite bracket. 

Sylvain’s expression was fond. “Have fun?” he asked.

“I love you,” Felix said. 

It wasn’t as if it was a secret. Sylvain said it all the time. It could be harder for Felix. To say something that was already obvious. 

“That good, huh,” Sylvain laughed, because that was the part that was hard for him, was the hearing. But then he scratched his scruffy cheek shyly and his smile relaxed, so Felix’s mouth curled up too and he closed his eyes again.


End file.
